About the Artist
Sean Purcell is a media studies scholar and installation artist. His work focuses at the intersections of medical history, digital humanities, new museology, and medical humanities. A PhD student at Indiana University’s Media School, his dissertation tracks the various specimen practices deployed by medical scientists studying tuberculosis.
A filmmaker by trade, Sean’s research applies arts-based methods to address issues found in medicine’s awful, exploitative pasts. Currently, he is developing a series of works on medical vision, the first of which—a photo essay titled “Dermographic Opacities”—has been published for the digital humanities journal _Epoiesen_. An installation, titled Terminal Imaginaries, is scheduled to be shown in May 2022.
Before producing these multimedia projects, Sean wrote and directed experimental documentaries. His two most recent works, The Vivisected Earth and The Modern Orpheus, used found footage images to explore areas of thought ignored or overlooked by American artists, and confront the emotions that emerged after engaging with these images. The Vivisected Earth addressed the guilt of the American consumer, focusing on consumption's primary moral dilemma--is it ethical for me to eat another, even if I must do so to survive? The Modern Orpheus addressed the forgotten cultural guilt concerning America's use of the atomic bomb in World War II.
Sean's award winning work has been featured at film festivals both nationally and internationally.